Domestic wells in Arapahoe County

6,656 of the 17,030 well permits in Arapahoe County — 39.1% — are decreed for domestic.

How this group compares

Arapahoe County holds 2.7% of Colorado’s 243,096 domestic permits, while holding 2.8% of the register overall — so it is under-represented in this use.

Domestic means household water, and usually a little more — the commonest decreed use in Colorado by a wide margin.

What happened to these permits

4,255 of the 6,656 permits decreed for domestic in Arapahoe County ended with a well the Division was told about — 63.9%. And 870 expired without one: 13.1%.

An expired permit is the trap in a rural sale. A seller can produce a permit that lapsed years ago, and a permit is not a water right — the two are separate, and a purchase turns on both. What an expired permit does and does not mean.

Buying land in Arapahoe County, or need a well drilled?

6,656 well permits are on the Division’s register in Arapahoe County, 870 of them expired. This site tells you what a permit says; it does not drill, and it is not advice on a water right. Tell us where and we pass the request to drillers and water-rights advisers working in Colorado.

We take no commission and we recommend no driller. We have no arrangement with any firm today — we are collecting these requests in order to go and find them. What we do with this.

The permits

Part of a bigger picture: all 17,030 permits in Arapahoe County, and every domestic permit in Colorado.

Other groups of a similar size

• Domestic — Adams 9,364
• Monitoring/sampling — Adams 9,123
• Domestic — Boulder 8,225
• Monitoring/sampling — Jefferson 8,093
• Domestic — Larimer 7,975
• Household Use Only — Teller 7,077
• Irrigation — Weld 6,468
• Domestic — Park 6,433
• Household Use Only — Grand 6,408
• Household Use Only — Larimer 6,200
• Domestic — Pueblo 5,760